A CHERN–SIMONS E8 GAUGE THEORY OF GRAVITY IN D = 15, GRAND UNIFICATION AND GENERALIZED GRAVITY IN CLIFFORD SPACES

Abstract

A novel Chern–Simons E8 gauge theory of gravity in D = 15 based on an octicE8 invariant expression in D = 16 (recently constructed by Cederwall and Palmkvist) is developed. A grand unification model of gravity with the other forces is very plausible within the framework of a supersymmetric extension (to incorporate spacetime fermions) of this Chern–Simons E8 gauge theory. We review the construction showing why the ordinary 11D Chern–Simons gravity theory (based on the Anti de Sitter group) can be embedded into a Clifford-algebra valued gauge theory and that an E8 Yang–Mills field theory is a small sector of a Clifford (16) algebra gauge theory. An E8 gauge bundle formulation was instrumental in understanding the topological part of the 11-dim M-theory partition function. The nature of this 11-dim E8 gauge theory remains unknown. We hope that the Chern–Simons E8 gauge theory of gravity in D = 15 advanced in this work may shed some light into solving this problem after a dimensional reduction.